The Epic eBook

admirably quarried out of a great rock-face of stubborn
experience. But for this to be worked into some
great structure of epic poetry, the Heroic Age must
be capable of producing individuality of much profounder
nature than any of its fighting champions. Or
rather, we should simply say that the production of
epic poetry depends on the occurrence (always an accidental
occurrence) of creative genius. It is quite likely
that what Homer had to work on was nothing superior
to the Arthurian legends. But Homer occurred;
and the tales of Troy and Odysseus became incomparable
poetry.

An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic
lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them
into a continuous narrative. An epic is not even
a re-creation of old things; it is altogether a new
creation, a new creation in terms of old things.
And what else is any other poetry? The epic poet
has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition
of style; and that is what every other poet has behind
him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather
narrower, rather more strictly compelling. This
must not be lost sight of. It is what the poet
does with the tradition he falls in which is, artistically,
the important thing. He takes a mass of confused
splendours, and he makes them into something which
they certainly were not before; something which, as
we can clearly see by comparing epic poetry with mere
epic material, the latter scarce hinted at. He
makes this heap of matter into a grand design; he
forces it to obey a single presiding unity of artistic
purpose. Obviously, something much more potent
is required for this than a fine skill in narrative
and poetic ornament. Unity is not merely an external
affair. There is only one thing which can master
the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and
that is, an ability to see in particular human experience
some significant symbolism of man’s general
destiny.

It is natural that, after the epic poet has arrived,
the crude epic material in which he worked should
scarcely be heard of. It could only be handed
on by the minstrels themselves; and their audiences
would not be likely to listen comfortably to the old
piecemeal songs after they had heard the familiar
events fall into the magnificent ordered pomp of the
genuine epic poet. The tradition, indeed, would
start afresh with him; but how the novel tradition
fared as it grew old with his successors, is difficult
guesswork. We can tell, however, sometimes, in
what stage of the epic material’s development
the great unifying epic poet occurred. Three
roughly defined stages have been mentioned. Homer
perhaps came when the epic material was still in its
first stage of being court-poetry. Almost certainly
this is when the poets of the Crusading lays, of the
Song of Roland, and the Poem of the Cid,
set to work. Hesiod is a clear instance of the
poet who masters epic material after it has passed
into popular possession; and the Nibelungenlied
is thought to be made out of matter that has passed
from the people back again to the courts.